


Not Afraid

by elle_stone



Series: Cold Creeps Up the Length of My Spine [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Mild Gore, See notes for warnings, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 02:47:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21219296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Octavia takes her dog Helios on a trip up to the Blake family cabin. As she drives through the mountains, she hears fuzzy, static reports on the radio of an escaped killer on the loose…Please see notes for warnings.





	Not Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a retelling of a well-known urban legend. If you've heard the story before, you already know what content warnings apply. If you haven't heard it, the warnings will spoil the ending. So I've put them in the endnotes.
> 
> Please note that this story is not rated and I have chosen not to use archive warnings. **All relevant warnings are in the endnotes.**

Helios, a good dog and an experienced traveler, sits in the passenger seat as Octavia Blake drives her brother's old two-door up into the mountains. She has the windows rolled all the way down, so she can feel the wind blowing through her hair, and the radio turned all the way up, to a station playing throwback eighties hits—the kind of music she would never admit to listening to, not to anyone but Helios. He doesn't mind if she sings along, loudly and off-key.

Ahead of them, the road curves and sways and rises, hugging the mountainside, while up to their right and down to their left, and all along the rolling hills in the distance, the forest extends in brilliant hues of yellow and orange and red. The fresh mountain air smells of leaves and earth and that crisp, clear scent that only comes in the middle of the woods and at the turning of the season. Octavia's car is the only vehicle in sight. She feels like she is climbing up to the top of the world.

Around the next corner, the radio starts to crackle and fizz, and she knows she's heading into the real wilderness now. A vibrant teal road sign, slightly tilted, stuck in among the rocks declares: **ARCADIA, 5 miles**. Arcadia is civilization but only of a sort; Octavia spent every summer of her childhood up at the Blake family cabin, and she knows that little town just as well as she knows the city where, somehow, she has found herself living now. She knows it has just about three hundred people, one gas station, and a grocery store that sells the best chocolate chip cookies in the tri-state. Not much else.

And past Arcadia, only the trees and the smell of pine needles and the hooting of owls outside the window at night.

"Almost there, Helios," she says, and reaches out to give his soft yellow head a pat. He likes it when she skritches just between his ears, barks twice loudly to show his approval, and Octavia grins.

The song fades out, almost entirely out into static, and Octavia reaches over to switch the radio off. Then the announcer's voice breaks through, rough with interference, but audible, and she settles her hands on the wheel again.

_And that was Vacation by the Go-Gos, a little taste of summer for you here on this brilliant fall afternoon. I hope you're all enjoying this marvelous weather—_

A rush of white noise briefly drowns out the voice. Then Octavia take another turn, and the first small houses of Arcadia appear in the distance, and the static fades away once more like waves retreating back into the sea.

_—A news bulletin. The sheriff's office would like to remind you that—still in effect—I repeat—still in effect—_

Her brow furrows, and she fiddles briefly with the radio knob, trying to clear away something of the crackle and hum.

_—who escaped from the local prison last summer is still on the loose. He was last sighted three weeks ago not far from—keep your doors and windows locked and—please exercise caution. Remember this man has killed—people and is to be considered armed—dangerous._

Octavia flicks the radio off with one decisive click. For a moment, the woods around her seem just a little too vast, the tiny village coming up on her right, too small against the endless sweep and rise of the hills. The wind through the windows brings too harsh of a bite.

For a moment, these thoughts. Then they pass. Then she straightens her shoulders, pushes her hair out of her face, and flicks her blinker on. "We're always careful," she says, reaching out to scratch under Helios's chin, "aren't we, good boy?"

*

She stops at Arcadia's gas station to fill up her tank and check her phone. She's already down to one bar, and once she gets to the cabin, her service will be completely gone. Helios sticks his head out of the window, watching her, while she leans against the side of the car, listening to the gas thunk its way into the tank and absently scrolling through her messages. The most recent are all from her brother.

_I left some extra blankets in the second-floor closet in case it gets cold tonight._

_Remember to lock all the windows and doors before you go to sleep._

_And remember to check the attic. The window sticks so you really have to close it tight. _

_I found squirrels up there last year. I think they're getting in through that tree in the backyard._

_And have a good time! Call me when you're on your way back._

She rolls her eyes, but she's smiling as she reaches the last of the string. Bellamy is a worrier, but well-meaning, and he gave her his car when he bought that new one last spring, and anyway she'll probably need those extra blankets tonight. All of her memories of the cabin are from the warm summer months, when they kept the windows open all night and fans blowing in every room, and she wore shorts and tank tops and spent the whole trip scratching at the constellations of bug bites on her tanned arms and legs. But the mountains get cold after dark in the fall. She knows this well enough from the camping trips she took with her ex-boyfriend after college. Still she packed so quickly for this trip that she only has a single extra sweater in her bag.

She sends Bellamy a quick message back—_Got it! Don't worry so much, Bell. Helios and I are already having a wonderful time_—then turns her phone off and throws it in the backseat. She pays for the gas, grabs a few snacks for the road, and drives off. At the next turn in the road, Arcadia falls away into the distance.

*

The Blakes' cabin sits at the end of a long, rutted dirt road, in a clearing in the heart of the forest. Octavia pulls the car up in front of the house, kills the engine, and steps out. She takes a moment to appreciate the simple joy of arrival: the way the slam of the car doors disturbs that particular, unique forest stillness; the settling of dusk among the trees; the fresh scent of the pine needles strewn about her feet. She lets Helios out; he barks loudly and runs in mad circles around the car. But Octavia just leans back against the trunk and sticks her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and looks at the familiar little cabin in front of her. Perfectly square, two stories tall, with a narrow attic at the top. On the front porch, her grandfather's old rocking chair. Two empty windowboxes balanced on the railing, where Bellamy was trying to grow flowers last year. All the lights are off now, the red curtains in the front windows drawn.

Octavia unlocks the door and ushers Helios in, smiling at the way his cheerful barking and the skittering of his nails against the floor banish the threat of loneliness. Or whatever this is. Loneliness, or perhaps a whisper of unease. The forest isn't quiet, but alive with animal noise, insect noise, the inscrutable movements of the trees when the wind blows. She hikes her bag over her shoulder, hauls it inside, then kicks the door closed behind her and twists the lock shut.

Helios waits in the kitchen while Octavia turns on every light on the first floor and double checks the locks on the back door and all the windows, upstairs and down.

By the time they've both eaten dinner, the sun has set completely and the temperature has dropped. Octavia shivers, pulling her sleeves down and over her fingers as she stacks her dishes in the sink. "Getting chilly, huh, Helios?" she says, reaching down to give him a reassuring pat. Then she stretches briefly up onto her toes, trying to see through the window at the depth of the night outside. But only her own reflection stares back at her.

On the floor at her feet, Helios barks. The noise draws out into a soft little whine.

"All right. Let's see about those blankets Bell left for us. Then maybe a shower, okay?"

Helios barks, a short and disapproving sound.

"Don't worry, the shower's just for me."

She finds the blankets stacked in the upstairs closet: an extra comforter; a fuzzy, plaid fleece; and their grandmother's hand-sewn quilt. "Only three," Octavia murmurs, glancing down at Helios. He's staring up at her, a quizzical tilt to his head. "Bell really restrained himself. I thought there'd be... six at least." She pulls the quilt down and wraps it around herself. It smells a little bit like old soap and a little bit like the wooden shelf it was placed on, and a little bit like Grandma Blake. Octavia buries her nose in it one last time before spreading it on the bed.

The light in the bathroom flickers when she switches it on, so she grabs an electric lantern from the closet, sighs in relief when the batteries still work. She's halfway through her shower when the overhead burns out completely, but with the lantern perched on the sink's edge and the hallway light still glowing beyond the open door, she has more than enough to see by. Tomorrow, she tells herself, she'll grab a step stool and explore the top shelf of the closet, see if her older brother, in his infinite wisdom, stashed away any extra bulbs up there.

But not tonight. Tonight, she is tired. Tonight she wants to dry herself off, and brush her teeth, and go to bed. Bugs buzz and flick themselves against the lantern light, the last survivors of the season, and cold seeps in through the floorboards, so that she is constantly shifting her weight between her bare feet. The faucet sticks when she tries to turn it off. She glances back over her shoulder, at Helios, who is sitting just outside the door and watching her.

"Charming little detail I forgot," she says, and he makes a quiet sound deep in his throat.

She tries again, but the faucet still drips.

Drip.

Drip.

And again, with more effort this time, the hot water handle digging into her palm, until she feels it creaking into place at last. The dripping stops.

Octavia picks up her lantern, returns to the master bedroom, turns off the last of the lights in the house, and sets the lantern on the table by the bed. She puts on a set of warm pajamas and climbs under the covers. She waits until Helios has settled down next to her on the floor, and then she reaches out her hand for him. His warm, rough tongue licks her palm, and she feels cozy and safe, in her cabin in the woods on a chilly autumn night.

She clicks off the lantern and settles down to sleep.

*

Octavia falls into a deep sleep, then wakes again abruptly in the middle of the night. The quiet, nearly complete, is disturbed by the tiniest of sounds, rhythmic and unceasing. She turns herself over from her stomach onto her side, as slowly and as carefully as she can manage. Winces at the creak of the mattress springs beneath her weight. In her dreams, she must have imagined someone underneath the bed, or leering in through the window, or watching her from the doorway. She must have _dreamed_. And that is why she feels so uneasy that her limbs ache and her throat feels raw and dry. That is why she has to force herself to let go of the tension in her body, bit by bit, to sink into the pillows again.

The room is so completely and unfathomably dark that she sees just as little with her eyes open as with them closed. She tells herself to let them close.

She listens to the sound, repeating, repeating—

Dripping, dripping—

The faucet again.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

"Helios," she mumbles, groggy and sore, "I thought I turned it off."

She remembers very clearly that she did. And yet—

Drip.

She can still hear it.

Drip.

She tucks her nose into the pillow and closes her eyes tight, but of course she can still hear it, and it's so hard to think through the constant, tiny, repeating, small, persistent noise.

Drip.

Hard to remind herself that she is safe, that the nightmares she still feels pressing in are only figments of her imagination. That nothing is lurking there over her shoulder, where she can feel some presence, where her mind has made up demons that hover over her, or press their malformed faces up against the windowpanes—

Drip.

Drip.

She curls herself closer around her pillows, all the way up now to the edge of the bed, her knees tucked in close to her stomach and her feet wrapped in the blankets, Grandma Blake's quilt pulled up to her chin.

Drip.

What she should do, and she knows it, knows in a slow and serpentine way, knows in the spaces between drips where she can still form muddled thoughts, is get up and turn the stupid thing off. But the cabin will be cold in the middle of the night, and she is warm under the blankets. And she is tired. And if she stands up, she will have to face the creaking floorboards and the empty spaces in the rooms, the pitch black of the hall. And the light in the bathroom has burned out, so she will have to stand at the sink with only the lantern to illuminate the work of her hands, pulling and straining at that damned hot water tap.

Drip.

She cannot face it. In the morning, in the simple clarity of warm autumn sun: her nightmares will seem silly then.

When she was little, she was afraid of the dark. Bellamy gave her a little nightlight, shaped like a pine tree, and every night before she went to bed, he'd turn it on, and then he'd sit beside her for a moment and remind her: _If you wake up scared in the middle of the night, just tell yourself again and again, I am not afraid. If you keep reminding yourself that you're brave and you're strong, the fear will fade away._

Most of the time, it worked. When it didn't, she'd reach her hand over the side of the bed, and pet their dog, Andromeda, who always slept right by her bed. Like Helios does now.

She lets her palm slide along the mattress edge, then fall over the end, not searching him out but letting him find her—Helios has always had an uncanny sense of when she needs him. He wakes when she wakes. He comforts her when she needs to be comforted.

"I'm not afraid, puppy," she murmurs, as she feels his warm, wet tongue licking her fingers. The sensation tickles just a little, like it always does, and makes her smile.

She pulls her hand back up, cuddles down beneath the blankets, and soon drifts off to sleep again.

*

She sleeps for perhaps an hour, maybe less, maybe more. When she wakes again, she's lying on her back in the middle of the bed, and the faucet is still dripping, and no hint of dawn has yet started to turn the impenetrable, opaque black into gray.

Drip.

Drip.

Her heart is pounding against her ribs: the high tide of an adrenaline rush, the source of which she cannot name.

Drip.

Unseen threats linger in the corners of the room.

Drip.

The persistent dripping sound is interrupted, briefly, by a gust of wind outside, a jangle of taps against the window. Octavia startles, her heart in her throat. _Just the trees, just the trees_, she tells herself, over and over. _Just the tree branches tapping on the window, just the trees._

Drip, drip—just the monotonous splatter of water against porcelain, boring into her brain, forcing her awake.

She rolls all the way over again, toward the edge of the bed, and buries her face in her pillow. The sound of the tree branches has brought to mind, unbidden, the memory of Bellamy's texts.

"Helios," she whispers, low and soft, like a secret, "Helios, we forgot to check the attic door."

But—nothing to be done about it now. She can hear the water dripping, the occasional whistle of wind, but no sounds from above. No pattering of tiny squirrel feet. No mysterious little noises scrabbling above her head.

So it's okay, it's okay.

Drip.

Drip.

She's not afraid.

Drip.

"I'm not afraid."

She snuggles up to the corner of the bed, closes her eyes and uncurls her toes and lets her tense, held breath release. The nightmares will pass, as nighttime does. And everything will be okay again in the warmth and the sun.

She slips her hand over the edge of the bed again, waiting for Helios's reassuring, gentle licks across her fingers and palm. There they are now, his tongue wet and warm. She sighs. And this time, instead of curling her arm in against herself, she leaves it stretched out, her hand hanging limply in the air.

*

Octavia opens her eyes slowly, squinting into the light that falls in a broad swath across the bed. Small dust motes float in front of her. A slight breeze animates the leaves outside her window, making them sway in a flurry of yellows and golds. She smiles. Whatever is left of her dreams is already falling away, leaving behind only the vaguest memory of darkness and an inscrutable, freezing fear. She curls in around herself, the quilt pulled up to her chin, and lets her eyelids flutter closed again. She basks in a feeling of peace and calm and—

Drip.

And that. That stupid dripping again.

She turns onto her back and flips the blankets down, feeling the cool air of the room, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the steady dripping from the bathroom, as unceasing and as annoying now as it was in the middle of the night.

Drip—drip—drip.

"Well, Helios," she says, as she hauls herself up, "I suppose I should finally fix—"

Strange. When she pulls herself to the edge of the bed and swings her legs around, she notices that Helios is not laying down on the floor at her feet. So unlike him. He always waits for her to get up; he's always right there next to her in the morning when she wakes. If she takes too long to feed him or take him out for his morning walk, he'll bark, or jump up on top of her sometimes and lick her face, but he never just sets out on his own.

She tells herself that this means nothing—strange new house, perhaps, and strange new habits, and anyway he's a dog, and dogs can be weird—but she still shivers as she sets her feet down against the floorboards, tries not to make too much noise as she stands up. The creak of the mattress makes her pause, for just a moment, her eyes closed and her body tense.

She finds herself listening to every slight sound as she walks down the hall: the way the house settles, the padding of her footsteps against the floorboards. An unexpected bluster of wind blows outside, shaking the windows, and setting the tree branches knocking against the panes once more. The bathroom door is half-closed, which also strikes her as odd, because she has a vague memory of leaving it wide open after she finished brushing her teeth the night before.

She pushes it open with her fingertips, the hinges creaking as the door swings wide. Then she stands in the doorway, perfectly still.

Her lungs have frozen up. Something terrible—realization, and horror, and the acrid taste of bile—rises up and up in her throat—

The faucet isn't leaking.

And Helios was not on the floor by her bed because he is here. She sees him in the mirror, hanging by his neck from the curtain rod. His throat is slit open, a steady patter of blood dripping, dripping, dripping against the tile.

And on the mirror, written in blood:

_Humans can lick too, beautiful._

The realization and the horror break all at once, and she screams.

*

She gets in her car and she doesn't stop driving until she's reached the police station in Arcadia. They call her brother for her, then dispatch a unit to the Blake family cabin. Somehow she finds herself sitting in the Sheriff's office, wrapped up tight in a blanket, clutching a paper cup of something warm in her hand. Her feet are still bare.

Later, with Bellamy sitting next to her, holding her close while she shakes and shakes, the Sheriff tells her that they've found no sign of the killer at the house. He must be long gone by now, he says. They did find a broken window up in the attic, though, right next to the outstretched branches of the big tree in the backyard, and in the corner, a collection of blankets and pillows forming a makeshift bed. "If I had to guess,” the Sheriff says, “I’d say it looks like he'd been hiding out there for maybe two or three weeks."

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: violence against animals / gory but non-explicit killing of pet dog
> 
> This story is most famously known as _The Licked Hand_. The protagonist is often a teenage girl staying alone for the first time, sometimes a near-sighted old lady. In a few versions, the dog does not die, and I was considering going in that direction for this version (because I'm a wimp when it comes right down to it), but imo the story works better in its more classic form.
> 
> You can find a moodboard for this story on my tumblr [@kinetic-elaboration](https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/188665032695/not-afraid-octavia-modern-au-35k-summary).


End file.
